Em Garner - Contaminated

“I’ll be right back.” He smiles right at me, no question about it, he’s not just being nice. He’s looking at me on purpose.

I’m filled with embarrassed heat. When he disappears through the door, I take the chance to unzip my coat and fan my face. Jean’s watching me with a small grin.

“He’s a cutie, isn’t he?”

“Um… Jean…”

She waves a hand. “Oh, I know, I know. You don’t want to tell a boy’s mom that you think he’s cute. But he is. And, Velvet.” She drops her voice. “He doesn’t have a girlfriend.”

It feels so nice to have a boy’s mother actually think I’m worth dating that I laugh and don’t feel too embarrassed anymore. “Okay, Jean.”

She holds up her hands. “I’m just saying.”

“Velvet doesn’t have a boyfriend,” Opal pipes up, without looking away from her picture. “She broke up with Tony because he was a jerk.”

“Opal!” I smack my forehead with my palm. “Shut up!”

Jean laughs. Before she can say anything else, the front doors bang open hard enough to smack the walls. Two cops in helmets, visors down, storm into the room with a writhing, struggling, screaming figure pinned between them. They’re between me and Opal, and I jump back while she cringes in her seat.

The Connies they round up these days are all malnourished, dressed in rags. They’ve been living in the woods or sewers or houses that nobody thoroughly checked. Sometimes, the cops find them in basements or attics where people have… kept them. This guy’s in a business suit, tie pulled half off, hair wild. He’s got dirt all over his pants, like he was rolling in mud. He’s snapping his jaws and kicking out. He’s missing a shoe.

“What are you doing? You can’t come in here that way!” Jean shouts. “New arrivals come in the back. Are you crazy?”

“I’m not crazy,” says the cop on the left. The visor muffles his voice, but it’s clear he’s struggling to keep his voice steady as the man at his side squirms and fights. “This guy, on the other hand…”

The man is screaming, low and hoarse. Over and over. Sort of like a dog barking, only much worse. He’s looking at all of us but not seeing anything. Foam curdles in the corners of his lips.

“Oh, God,” Jean cries, flapping her hands. “Take him in the back. What are you doing? Don’t you see there are children in here?”

“Sorry, ma’am,” says the cop on the right. He sounds more reasonable than his partner. At least until he turns to the man between them and without a word, without warning, jams his elbow into the guy’s gut. The guy doubles over, and the cop hits him on the back of the head.

We’re staring, horrified, as the man drops to the tile floor. His screaming stops, probably because he has no breath left for it. His hands are bound behind him with some sort of plastic cuffs, and he writhes and wriggles on the tiles like he’s swimming underwater.

Jean’s face has gone white and she has both hands over her mouth. “You can’t…”

The cop’s voice is louder than her whisper. “You have someone here who can take this thing?”

“It’s not a thing. It’s a person.” I say it before I can stop myself. I don’t want to stop myself. I can’t stop looking at him.

The cops both look at me. They look like space troopers. It’s scary not seeing their faces, even if something tells me it might be scarier to see what’s in their eyes. Or not there.

“This isn’t your business,” says the one on the left.

Opal lets out a squeak, and they both look at her. The one on the right mutters a curse. “Get this…” he trips on the word, but changes it “… guy out of here. There’s a kid, man. Get him out of here.”

Jean’s already pushing a button and calling for someone named Carlos to get up front right away, it’s an emergency. Everything’s happening very fast. I duck behind the cops, well out of reach of the Connie on the floor, and put my arms around Opal. We cling to each other as Carlos, a huge guy with arms like a professional wrestler’s, comes out of the back and stops at the sight of the man on the floor.

“Take him, please,” Jean says. “Officers, there’s paperwork to fill out.”

The one on the right lifts his visor as Carlos yanks the man to his feet and drags him away. The door closes behind him, and it’s like the room suddenly fills again with air we didn’t know we weren’t breathing. Opal’s shaking against me, but not crying. Jean’s eyes glisten with tears.

She takes a long, deep breath. “Officers, paperwork.”

The one on the right takes off his helmet and steps up to her. “At least that never changes.”

He takes the clipboard she hands him, and the pen. His partner looks at us. His face without the visor is young and tired-looking. He moves toward us and winces when we both shrink away.

“Hey.” His voice is quieter when he doesn’t have to talk through the visor. “Sorry about that. Hey, little girl, don’t cry. It’s okay.”

He looks at me. “Sorry, I used to carry lollipops, but I don’t have any now.”

“She doesn’t need a lollipop.”

Opal peeks around the shelter of my arms. “Yes, I do!” The cop laughs. “Sorry, kid.”

From behind him, his partner’s talking to Jean, and his voice raises just enough for me to hear him say, “He was in the grocery store.”

I look over Opal’s head. Jean’s not looking at me. I say to the cop in front of me, “The grocery store?”

“Yeah.” He looks uncomfortable, like he shouldn’t say anything.

Opal, denied a lollipop, goes back to her magazine. “Just… there?” Looking at him, I realize he’s not so much older than me. Sort of like the soldiers who came to our house that first time. Not much older than me at all.

“Yeah,” he says again. “Just went bat sh—uh—nuts right there in the frozen foods aisle. Took out a couple of shopping carts, broke open all the glass. We thought maybe he was drunk and disorderly, but we don’t take chances anymore with stuff like that.”

Before he can say anything else, a woman, who looks almost as wild eyed as the man did, bursts through the front doors. “Is my husband here?”

The cop turns from me. “Ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you to identify yourself.”

There’s a huge kerfuffle then, with the woman wailing, Jean trying to calm her, the cops trying to get some information. I guess in times past, the guy would’ve been taken to jail. Now they bring them straight to the kennels.

The cops go with the woman into the back, and Jean’s staring at me. She looks pretty shocked, which is the way I feel. She clears her throat and messes with some folders on the desk.

“Do you think he’s…,” I start to say, but it’s a day for interruptions, because Dillon and my mom come out of the other door, the one leading to the cages.

“Mama!” Opal cries.

And my mother, seeing us, opens her arms and runs to hug and hold us. Pressed against her, I close my eyes and try to forget this is different from what it used to be. She doesn’t smell the same, and I open my eyes.

She’s hugging us tight, not saying anything. Her hand strokes my hair. I can feel her heart beating against my cheek. I don’t want her to let go.

“Wow,” Jean says in a hushed voice. “I’ve never seen any of them do that before.”

I hold on to my mom as tight as I can.

“IT’S JUST AMAZING,” JEAN SAYS.

My mom’s smiling and patting both me and Opal on the cheeks. Opal giggles and hugs her. I move away, just a little.

“They’re not supposed to be able to come back, right?” I say this quietly, so my mom and Opal don’t hear.

Jean nods. “That’s right. That’s what they say.”